Jack Kevorkian

BMJ ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 342 (jun29 2) ◽  
pp. d4100-d4100
Author(s):  
N. Stafford
Keyword(s):  
Jack Kevorkian

The Empire of Death: How Culture and Economics Affect Informed Consent in the U.S., the U.K., and Japan

1994 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 357-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
George J. Annas ◽  
Frances H. Miller
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Informed Consent ◽  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
New York Times ◽  
The United States ◽  
Medical Intervention ◽  
Jack Kevorkian ◽  
Open Discussion ◽  
Legislative Changes

American culture reflects a paradox: the more openly we discuss death and its inevitability, the more money we spend to postpone and deny it. Sherwin Nuland's book How We Die, a frank description of the way our bodies deteriorate with and without medical intervention, topped the New York Times best seller list in the spring of 1994. At the same time, Jack Kevorkian, arguably the world 's best known physician, was being acquitted of violating Michigan 's law against assisted suicide, while a Michigan commission was debating legislative changes to permit physicians to help their terminally ill patients kill themselves. Despite such open discussion of death and expansion of the informed consent doctrine, U.S. medical expenditures at the end of life remain astronomically high. Most of this elevated spending is attributable to new medical technology.In J.G. Ballard 's Empire of the Sun, the United States, British and Japanese cultures are contrasted through the eyes of a young British boy incarcerated by the Japanese army in China during World War II.

Hippocrates, Maimonides and the Doctor's Responsibility

2000 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kalman J. Kaplan ◽  
Matthew B. Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Greek Society ◽  
Jack Kevorkian ◽  
Hippocratic Tradition

Jack Kevorkian criticizes the Hippocratic tradition in Greek medicine, which bans the physician from giving his patient a lethal medication. He sees this prohibition as potentially bringing harm to a suffering patient and not reflective of the larger Greek society which was tolerant and even approving of suicide. However, Kevorkian's advocacy of doctor-assisted suicide can be seen as the polarity of doctor abandonment of the suffering patient rather than as an antidote to it. Both positions involve an outcome of physician removal from the suffering patient, which can be contrasted with Maimonides' command to the physician to watch over the life and death of his patients.

Gender and Physician-Assisted Suicide: An Analysis of the Kevorkian Cases, 1990–1997

2000 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 165-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvia Sara Canetto ◽  
Janet D. Hollenshead
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
The United States ◽  
Suicide Mortality ◽  
Medical Examiner ◽  
Physician Assisted Suicide ◽  
Jack Kevorkian ◽  
Hastened Death ◽  
Real Phenomenon ◽  
National Trends

This study examines the seventy-five suicide cases Dr. Jack Kevorkian acknowledged assisting during the period between 1990 and 1997. Although these cases represent a range of regional and occupational backgrounds, a significant majority are women. Most of these individuals had a disabling, chronic, nonterminal-stage illness. In five female cases, the medical examiner found no evidence of disease whatsoever. About half of the women were between the ages of forty-one and sixty, and another third were older adults. In contrast, men were almost as likely to be middle-aged as to be older adults. Men's conditions were somewhat less likely than women's to be chronic and nonterminal-stage. The main reasons for the hastened death mentioned by both the person and their significant others were having disabilities, being in pain, and fear of being a burden. The predominance of women among Kevorkian's assisted suicides contrasts with national trends in suicide mortality, where men are a clear majority. It is possible that individuals whose death was hastened by Kevorkian are not representative of physician-assisted suicide cases around the country, because of Kevorkian's unique approach. Alternatively, the preponderance of women among Kevorkian's assisted suicides may represent a real phenomenon. One possibility is that, in the United States, assisted suicide is particularly acceptable for women. Individual, interpersonal, social, economic, and cultural factors encouraging assisted suicide in women are examined.

Paging Dr. Death: The Political Theater of Assisted Suicide in Michigan

1997 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan P. Fino ◽  
John M. Strate ◽  
Marvin Zalman
Keyword(s):  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
Political Theater ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Lethal Injection ◽  
Jack Kevorkian

Dr. Jack Kevorkian, a retired pathologist from Royal Oak, Michigan, created an instant sensation on June 4, 1990, when he assisted Janet Adkins in committing suicide by lethal injection. Kevorkian's activities, and the ineffectual efforts of public officials to stop him, generated social conflict, issue expansion, and political theater. In this case, political theater involved acts of civil disobedience that resulted in arrests, three high-profile criminal trials, and three subsequent acquittals. As the participants in the conflict tried to generate public support for their respective positions, the debate degenerated into name-calling, hyperbole, and rights talk. This kind of public discourse limits the potential for self-governance and leads to reliance on the courts or other methods of conflict resolution.

Older Adults' Perceptions of Dr. Kevorkian in Middletown, U.S.A.

1997 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 405-412 ◽  
Author(s):  
David C. Morris
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Path Analysis ◽  
Church Attendance ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Terminally Ill ◽  
Community Setting ◽  
Initial Analysis ◽  
Jack Kevorkian ◽  
The Right

This article focuses upon whether 422 randomly selected older adults believe that Dr. Jack Kevorkian should or should not be prosecuted. The study was conducted by Ball State University's Department of Sociology in the Lynd's classic community setting of “Middletown,” a.k.a. Muncie, Indiana. The findings indicate that a majority of the respondents do not support prosecuting Kevorkian and also feel that the terminally-ill have the right to end their own lives. Of eight variables included in the initial analysis, four were found to explain most of the variance in attitudes toward prosecuting Dr. Kevorkian. Those variable are: attitudes on taking one's life to end suffering, political liberalism-conservatism, education and frequency of church attendance ( R = 0.5331; R2 = 0.2842). Those who favor the right to take one's life to end suffering, who see themselves as politically liberal, who are more educated and who attend church less frequently, tend to oppose prosecution. A multivariate path analysis examines interrelationships between the eight variables previously mentioned.

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